Could Inflammaging and Its Sequelae Be Prevented or Mitigated?

Aged humans display a chronic and low-grade inflammation, termed "inflammaging", which has been potentially linked to the subsequent development of some aging-associated systemic disorders, including type 2 diabetes, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease and obesity. Though the origin of aging-associated systemic inflammation is uncertain, epidemiological studies show that inflammatory dermatoses (psoriasis and eczema) are risk factors for some aging-associated systemic disorders, such as type 2 diabetes and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Moreover, recent studies demonstrate that epidermal dysfunction in aged skin not only causes cutaneous inflammation, but also a subsequent increase in circulating levels of proinflammatory cytokines, suggesting that the skin could be a major contributor to inflammaging. This hypothesis is further supported by reductions in circulating levels of proinflammatory cytokines in both aged humans and murine, following improvements in epidermal function with topical emollients. Therefore, correction of epidermal dysfunction could be a novel approach for the prevention and mitigation of certain inflammation-associated chronic disorders in aged humans

Present status on experimental search for pentaquarks

It has been ten years since the first report for a positive strangeness pentaquark-like baryon state. However the existence of the pentaquark state is still controversial. Some contradictions between the experiments are unsolved. In this paper we review the experimental search for the pentaquark candidates $\Theta^+$, $\Theta^{++}$, $\Xi^{--}$, $\Theta_c^0$ and $N^*$ in details. We review the experiments with positive results and compare the experiments with similar conditions but opposite results.Comment: 20 latex pages, 2 figures, to appear in IJMPA as a revie

Transverse single-spin asymmetries of pion production in semi-inclusive DIS at subleading twist

We study the single-spin asymmetries with the $\sin\phi_S$ and $\sin(2\phi_h -\phi_S)$ angular dependences for charged and neutral pions produced in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering on the transversely polarized proton target. The theoretical interpretations of the two asymmetries are presented in terms of the convolution of the twist-3 quark transverse momentum dependent distributions and twist-2 fragmentation functions. Specifically, we investigate the role of the distributions $f_T$, $h_T$ and $h_T^\perp$ in the $\sin\phi_S$ asymmetry, as well as the role of the distributions $f_T^\perp$, $h_T$ and $h_T^\perp$ in the $\sin(2\phi_h -\phi_S)$ asymmetry. We calculate these distributions in a spectator-diquark model and predict the corresponding asymmetries for the first time, considering the kinematics at HERMES, JLab and COMPASS. The numerical estimates show that the asymmetries are sizable, and the dominant contribution to the $\sin\phi_S$ asymmetry comes from the T-odd distribution $f_T$, while $f_T^\perp$ gives the main contribution to the $\sin(2\phi_h -\phi_S)$ asymmetry. The future measurements on these asymmetries can shed light on the information of twist-3 transverse momentum dependent distributions.Comment: 11 pages, 12 figures, version published in PR

Electron-nuclear entanglement in the cold lithium gas

We study the ground-state entanglement and thermal entanglement in the hyperfine interaction of the lithium atom. We give the relationship between the entanglement and both temperature and external magnetic fields.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

Pareto Navigation Gradient Descent: a First-Order Algorithm for Optimization in Pareto Set

Many modern machine learning applications, such as multi-task learning, require finding optimal model parameters to trade-off multiple objective functions that may conflict with each other. The notion of the Pareto set allows us to focus on the set of (often infinite number of) models that cannot be strictly improved. But it does not provide an actionable procedure for picking one or a few special models to return to practical users. In this paper, we consider \emph{optimization in Pareto set (OPT-in-Pareto)}, the problem of finding Pareto models that optimize an extra reference criterion function within the Pareto set. This function can either encode a specific preference from the users, or represent a generic diversity measure for obtaining a set of diversified Pareto models that are representative of the whole Pareto set. Unfortunately, despite being a highly useful framework, efficient algorithms for OPT-in-Pareto have been largely missing, especially for large-scale, non-convex, and non-linear objectives in deep learning. A naive approach is to apply Riemannian manifold gradient descent on the Pareto set, which yields a high computational cost due to the need for eigen-calculation of Hessian matrices. We propose a first-order algorithm that approximately solves OPT-in-Pareto using only gradient information, with both high practical efficiency and theoretically guaranteed convergence property. Empirically, we demonstrate that our method works efficiently for a variety of challenging multi-task-related problems

Establishing low-lying doubly charmed baryons

We systematically study the $S$-wave doubly charmed baryons using the method of QCD sum rules. Our results suggest that the $\Xi_{cc}^{++}$ recently observed by LHCb can be well identified as the $S$-wave $\Xi_{cc}$ state of $J^P = 1/2^+$. We study its relevant $\Omega_{cc}$ state, whose mass is predicted to be around 3.7 GeV. We also systematically study the $P$-wave doubly charmed baryons, whose masses are predicted to be around 4.1 GeV. Especially, there can be several excited doubly charmed baryons in this energy region, and we suggest to search for them in order to study the fine structure of the strong interaction.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, 1 table; A mistake was found when evaluating decay constants of the S-wave charmed baryons. The conclusion is not change

The SNARE protein FolVam7 mediates intracellular trafficking to regulate conidiogenesis and pathogenicity in Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici.

Soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor attachment protein receptors (SNAREs) are conserved in fungi, plants and animals. The Vam7 gene encodes a v-SNARE protein that involved in vesicle trafficking in fungi. Here, we identified and characterized the function of FolVam7, a homologue of the yeast SNARE protein Vam7p in Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici (Fol), a fungal pathogen of tomato. FolVam7 contains SNARE and PX (Phox homology) domains that are indispensable for normal localization and function of FolVam7. Targeted gene deletion showed that FolVam7-mediated vesicle trafficking is important for vegetative growth, asexual development, conidial morphology and plant infection. Further cytological examinations revealed that FolVam7 is localized to vesicles and vacuole membranes in the hyphae stage. Moreover, the ΔFolvam7 mutant is insensitive to salt and osmotic stresses and hypersensitive to cell wall stressors. Taken together, our results suggested that FolVam7-mediated vesicle trafficking promotes vegetative growth, conidiogenesis and pathogenicity of Fol